How Long Is Your First Draft Compared To Your Final Finished Product?

Prophecies

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I'm working on my first draft, and because I work with a structured outline, it's within the +/- 35% range of the desired word count. So, my first draft will be 65% the length of the final book.

As I'm aiming for a 120,000 word novel, and if my calculations are correct, my first draft will be 82,000ish words. Pretty good! I've accepted my writing process, but I thought I'd create a thread to hear from others in case I find myself lost or directionless at times. Plus, there are alot of writers who search into Google 'how long is a first draft' (I was one of them) so it'd assist.

Everyone differs, which is great. So when answering, maybe you'd like to specify your genre, writing process (pantser or plotter) and whether future drafts (second, third, fourth, etc) are made more difficult by how many words are in your first.

My genre is literary fiction, I'm a plotter, and my future drafts have reasonable levels of difficulty, but the time spent between drafts helps with the imagination.
 

Chris P

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I write contemporary mainstream, aiming at "upmarket" (whether I achieve that or not is another matter! :p).

For me, the length of first versus final draft has varied from book to book. My first projects were waaaaay too long and needed a lot of painful cutting back (some of which I regret, most of which was needed). My later projects tended to the too short, and subplots needed to be added not only for length but to raise the stakes of the main plot. In my early writings, I usually would write whatever scene came to mind, spend a lot of time and love on it, and let it fall where it would within the overall story line, sometimes needing revision for continuity if it moved. As I developed later projects, it was easier for me to outline (formally or informally) and write a scene to fit the required elements.
 

lizmonster

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For me, too, it depends on genre. I usually write space opera, and those are reliably 150-180K for the rough draft, cut down to 130-ish for the final. I have a straight-SF MS that's rambled between 90 and 110K throughout its life, and looks to be settling at the upper range of that.

I'm a pantser, mostly. Writing out scenes is how I work out - and sometimes discover - plot points. It's fun, but it does bloat my first drafts.
 

katfeete

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I’m a pantser and I write out of order, so my “drafts” end wherever I run out of steam and need to get the shape of the story revised and reset in my head. As such they run short. My first draft of the current story (a space opera murder mystery) was about 80K; I’m about three-quarters of the way through the revision and at 100K, and I‘ve got enough large chunks unwritten (a bunch of the MC’s backstory and personal arc, a big setting event, pretty much all of the denouement) that I doubt I’ll bring it in under 120K.

However, I do tend to overwrite the actual scenes — most of the revised ones are dropping at least a quarter of their wordcount — so I still think I’ll be able to finish the mess in the 120-130K range, which is more-or-less acceptable for the genre.
 

LJD

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I usually cut 10-20%...lately, closer to 20%. Like, my first draft will be 70k+ and my final will be 60k. I write short romance novels (and novellas) and I'm a plotter. In revisions I don't cut many scenes, but I tend to be wordy and repeat myself in my first draft.
 

LadyRedRover

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My first drafts are all over the road. I'll usually get 60-70k and then cut 20k and add back about 30k and then cut 10k...Eventually, my draft gets where it needs to be, but it's not pretty lol
 

Woollybear

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I enjoy cutting and am learning to enjoy interiorizing, which lengthens. I aim for 100K or so (SFF). The length seems to waffle around that number.
 

starrystorm

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My books always end up in the 50k range or at least close to it on the first draft. I always have to go in a bulk my work up. I try shooting for near 70k by the time I'm finished with the whole thing (but I've never actually made it to 70, just really close. Of course, it also depends on what age group your audience is. I write YA so I can get by with shorter novels.
 

AstronautMikeDexter

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I guess I'd say my final draft is usually shorter than the first draft. I tend to overwrite at first to fill space and then I go back, cut a bunch of unnecessary stuff, and fill out the good bits. The last book I wrote was within 5,000 words of the draft, so not too bad.
 

indianroads

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A plotter here.
I shoot for a final product in the range of 100,000 - 105,000 words. To achieve that I write a skosh long and trim back during editing. I've talked with others that write short then lengthen in another draft.
Really, what you do and how you do it depends on your process.
 

Fiender

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For me, it varies wildly. Sometimes I'll decide a first draft didn't delve too deeply on a certain character and add more in the revisions, and sometimes it's the opposite.

I will say that I often cut the first draft down by about 10 percent. Things may get added/removed based on beta feedback, but that's always gonna be the case. Try not to apply strict rules to each project, and make revisions based on what each book needs. :)
 

noranne

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I aim for 80k for my first draft, but that can be a struggle for me to reach. I usually add 10k or so during editing, and my books are still on the short side for SFF!
 

Little Anonymous Me

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Fantasy plotter who never puts in enough detail the first time around. I usually run 20-30K under my final draft. When there's something I'm not too sure about, I leave myself a note to figure it out and move on. Sometimes I figure it out as I'm working, but more frequently when I've stepped away and am reading the finished piece.
 

Cephus

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I tend to write details-light for my first draft, I'll even put in reminders to add things later on. My final draft is always longer than my first, sometimes by a considerable margin. The largest last year saw me adding more than 20k to a novel between first and last drafts.
 

Cephus

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Fantasy plotter who never puts in enough detail the first time around. I usually run 20-30K under my final draft. When there's something I'm not too sure about, I leave myself a note to figure it out and move on. Sometimes I figure it out as I'm working, but more frequently when I've stepped away and am reading the finished piece.

That's exactly what I do. I know what I want to write, but I may not want to spend the time right now to get it down, so I'll describe what I want to add and come back to it on the next pass.
 

Ellis Clover

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I've completed one book (mystery/suspense), with the second (mainstream/contemp) nearly finished - and I'm an overwriter on first draft, for sure. My weaknesses are 'stage dressing', which helps me visualise each scene as I'm writing but totally bogs down the action on re-read, and WAY too much internal monologue.

The first book came in at c.95k and ended, after multiple revisions, at 83k. That was a long, painful process - mostly because M/T/S does NOT come naturally to me (who knew that your favourite genre to read isn't necessarily the one you're able to write?) - but I learned a lot of valuable lessons about pacing, killing darlings, and making character/setting/backstory pull their weight that will definitely come in handy for future work.

The current WIP is a tick over 100k with four chapters to go, and I'm aiming for a 95-100k final word count so there'll be some pruning there too.

I'm still developing my novel-writing approach, but definitely lean more plotter, insofar as I write a 1-2 page outline with all the major plot points (which I might then modify or throw out altogether as the story progresses). When I began that first book I had two characters, an inciting event and a climax - and I found the process of filling in the gaps extremely difficult. Book two has been far more organised from the get-go and (assuming I finish the first draft in the next couple of months) will end up taking roughly 3/4 of the time to complete.